Distribution Automatique

Sunday, July 25

If you haven't yet seen this
excellent show, try to go,
it's really worth a visit.
It's in a ample, very bright & airy
space, and you'll get to see
the light and etherial metal
mesh mini-tower of our
friend Nikki Schrager {click here}.
The art critic Kenneth Baker,
despite his somewhat fussy complaining
about the choosing and installation process,
made some fine choices for this show as
you will see if you make it over there.
And why not?

Kenneth Baker, juror
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Toni has some wonderful artist
friends in the Bay area, among
them, the charming
Leonie Guyer, whose work
is utterly unique, and will not
conform to contemporary expectations
or categories, but is haunting, subtle
and unforgettable.

Leonie Guyer at Marjorie Wood (online) Gallery {click here{*********************************************
Also, I really wish you could see the
mosaic planters, small
end tables and mosaic
full size table by Toni's friend
Zee Zeleski. You've never seen mosaics
like these. Zee creates these witty mosaic
collages out of broken crockery, many
of which are now stepping stones in the
tropical garden paradise she created
in her back yard. As Toni's friends chatted
& talked art
over drinks and appetizers, I realized as
Toni showed her friends her own quizzical
& kinetic textile designs
(which all her friends enthusiastically
agreed easily qualify
as great fine art), I realized that this is
a very special group of artists that ought
to be seen together as an example of what I
might call: Shapes of Light, in my afternoon
of a faun, woozy, schmoozy curatorial fantasy.
***********************************************
Then, after a quick drive home and a little rest,
we drove to Enrico's (in North Beach)
to hear our friend Macy Blackman
play & sing rock'n roll. Macy, whose
rhythm and blues piano playing derives from a
true devotion to the history of blues in all
its ramifications (as he explained to me one night
as we enjoyed the view from window of he and his
wife Marsha's home in Kensington), also sometimes
reveals some pleasurable echoes of his friend Doctor
John, the Night Tripper's playing.
Macy played an album for me of possibly the first
blues singer, Charlie Patton,
then brought me one and I played it all the way
to Stinson Beach today, Sunday (the fog burned off!)
and back to Berkeley.
As it turns out, Macy's piano
work and singing, like Dr.John's,
is rooted in a true Lousiana bayou
tradition, one might say, despite the fact that like
me, Macy is a New York person all the way. Macy
is playing again at Enrico's in August.
****************************************
Dinner later Sunday night at the Mediterranean Cafe
in Berkeley with Laynie Browne and her
scientist husband,Brad. We spent a lot
of time telling each other ghost stories.
Turns out that more scientists are interested
in ghosts and the occult these days than
I might have guessed.

Tod Thiellman will
be publishing a book of Laynie's poetry
soon, I also learned.

Brad, a marine biologist discovered that
a tiny marine animal developed the first prototype
of the heart organ.

Brad also mentioned something that may have
some significance for time travel (of a sort).
When I mentioned that Macy Blackman had reminded
me that the earliest recordings involved using a megaphone
over a crystal, Brad said that now computer scientists
can photograph the grooves on old wax recorded cylinders,
and then are able to replay the sounds once recorded there.
I reminded Laynie of my quote in my Boundary of Blur
book from Rilke, who, on first hearing recorded sound,
imagined that one day we might be able to hear the
sounds recorded from the thoughts inside human skulls!